The Ben Shapiro Show - The Questions That Need Answers | Ep. 989

00:00:00.000 As good news starts to come in, Americans ask what it will take to start to reopen, President Trump targets the WHO, and the staffing chaos in the administration continues.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:18.000 Your online activity should not be public.

00:00:20.000 Protect yourself right now at expressvpn.com slash ben.

00:00:24.000 Well, before we get to anything else, you may have noticed the market a little bit volatile over the past few weeks.

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00:01:37.000 Alrighty.

00:01:40.000 We have some actual good news this morning.

00:01:42.000 We have some bad news in the sense that there is always a trailing indicator of where we are on this virus, and that is the death count.

00:01:48.000 The death count in New York was very high last night.

00:01:51.000 The death count overall in the United States was very high yesterday, but that is because we're moving quickly toward the peak.

00:01:57.000 So the death count tends to lag the actual number of infections that have been identified by a significant amount of time, anywhere from a week to two weeks.

00:02:04.000 Last night, we saw over 1,800 Americans dead over the course of the last day, which is a big number.

00:02:09.000 I mean, it's definitely a big number.

00:02:10.000 Normally in America, about 7,500 Americans die in a given day.

00:02:13.000 So add to that 1,800 Americans, although deaths from other causes, is down fairly significantly because everybody is staying in. 0.93

00:02:19.000 So nobody's dying in car crashes.

00:02:20.000 For example, overall, right now, the United States has suffered around 13,000 deaths.

00:02:26.000 And virtually all of those have accrued in the last two weeks.

00:02:29.000 We have well over 400,000 cases.

00:02:31.000 The majority of the cases that have been identified, or at least the vast plurality of the cases that have been identified, have been identified in New York.

00:02:38.000 142,000 cases identified in New York.

00:02:40.000 Over 5,000 deaths in New York.

00:02:42.000 Approaching 6,000 deaths in New York.

00:02:44.000 So New York is indeed the epicenter of all this, followed by New Jersey.

00:02:49.000 What's been kind of amazing is to look at the contrast between, say, New York and New Jersey and California, another highly populous state, which to date has still seen under 500 deaths in the state of California.

00:02:58.000 And the lockdown orders that went into place in California went down three, four days earlier than the lockdown orders that went into place in New York, maybe a week earlier on the very outside in places like San Francisco.

00:03:10.000 With all of that said, the big factor here is that not only did California lock down very quickly, California also is much more spacious.

00:03:17.000 Out in suburbia, people are not on top of each other the same way they are in areas with public transportation networks that are used in enormous fashion.

00:03:24.000 It's why you are seeing big upticks in Detroit.

00:03:27.000 Basically, population density is a fairly good indicator that you are going to get a fairly large wave because people are infecting each other.

00:03:34.000 Meanwhile, over in the UK, Boris Johnson remains in intensive care for the second straight day He apparently is not on ventilators.

00:03:40.000 He apparently is on some sort of supplemental oxygen.

00:03:44.000 Johnson is in stable condition.

00:03:45.000 He is breathing without the help of a ventilator, according to a government spokesperson.

00:03:48.000 The 55-year-old has not been diagnosed with pneumonia, but is indeed receiving oxygen.

00:03:53.000 So that is the latest on Boris Johnson.

00:03:54.000 Now, I said there was some good news.

00:03:56.000 And in fact, there is some very, very good news.

00:03:59.000 Like, a lot of good news, actually, today.

00:04:01.000 I mean, as good as the news can be in the middle of a global pandemic.

00:04:04.000 But the news is good.

00:04:05.000 So you remember that IMHG model that I've been talking about all week long?

00:04:08.000 I've been talking about the modeling and how uncertain the modeling is and what that means for how we get out of this.

00:04:13.000 And we're going to get to what all of the new data means for how we get out of this, how we reopen the economy and go back to some form of life in just a few minutes.

00:04:22.000 But the IMHG model has been downgraded again, again.

00:04:25.000 So over the course of the last five days, the IMHE model from University of Washington, which is a curve fitting model, meaning what they do is they look at all the data coming in from different areas, and then they try and draw a curve to fit the curves that they're seeing in other areas.

00:04:36.000 So as more data comes in, then they are changing their curve to fit the data that is coming in originally.

00:04:43.000 They're relying on Wuhan data, and they're relying on Italy data.

00:04:46.000 And it turns out that that data was outlying data or not properly reported in the case of China.

00:04:51.000 And so they were really overestimating what the peak would be.

00:04:54.000 It looks like they were also really over.

00:04:56.000 They were really underestimating how fast the peak would arrive because it looked as though it was taking a while for things to build to a peak because it did take a while in Italy, but that's because their hospital resource use was completely overwhelmed.

00:05:08.000 They have now downgraded the model again, the IMHE University of Washington model.

00:05:12.000 So remember, they'd suggest anything from 100,000 to 250,000 deaths by the beginning of August.

00:05:19.000 Well now, they are suggesting that the total number of deaths in the United States, which they had pegged at like 93,000 as of last Friday, and then they downgraded that to 82,000 on Monday.

00:05:29.000 They've now dropped it dramatically again.

00:05:31.000 That has now dropped to 60,415.

00:05:32.000 to 60,415.

00:05:35.000 So it has dropped by fully one third since Friday.

00:05:39.000 And that is because the new data is coming in.

00:05:41.000 Now, again, they were already gearing for everybody locked down.

00:05:46.000 That was one of the actual provisions of their study.

00:05:48.000 The study was done with the assumption that everyone was going to lock down through the end of May.

00:05:53.000 Now, is everybody going to lock down through the end of May?

00:05:55.000 I think that's pretty highly unlikely considering that we are only at the beginning of April.

00:05:55.000 I don't know.

00:06:00.000 Like going for another six weeks on this thing seems rather uncertain.

00:06:03.000 But with that said, the question is why the variability in their own model, right?

00:06:07.000 Why did the curve change so much?

00:06:08.000 So either they underestimated the impact of people locking down, meaning that people locking down really spread the transmission rates.

00:06:15.000 And it's a factor of the transmission rates, not the death rates, meaning that there are only a few factors here that could really be impacting the number of deaths total, right?

00:06:22.000 There's the transmission rate, meaning, let's say that you hold the death rate constant, let's say the death rate is 1%, but the transmission rate is like 3 times, so you're going to infect 3 people.

00:06:32.000 So that means tons of people get infected, and tons of people die, because you've infected a lot of people, even if the death rate is the same as, for example, the flu.

00:06:39.000 So that is one possibility.

00:06:41.000 Another possibility is that the death rates themselves were overestimated, meaning that the transmission rate was not as high as previously thought, but they thought that more people were dying of it than were actually dying of it.

00:06:54.000 And then the third possibility is they thought that if people stayed home, then they would still be going out and meeting other people, but they didn't change that factor.

00:07:01.000 What that really suggests is that either this thing is not quite as transmissible as they had originally supposed, or the death rate based on actual case numbers is not as high as previously supposed.

00:07:11.000 And these questions are really vital.

00:07:13.000 It is really important to know the answers to these questions, because until we know the answers to these questions, we're not going to know how to roll out a recovery plan.

00:07:20.000 Should we let tons of people out?

00:07:20.000 We're not going to know.

00:07:24.000 Because what if a huge percentage of the population has already had this thing?

00:07:28.000 What if 30% of the population has already had this thing?

00:07:31.000 As we are seeing in New York City, as the number of tests goes up, so do the number of positives.

00:07:35.000 We've actually seen something of 45-46% positive rate for people who are coming in for coronavirus tests in New York.

00:07:41.000 Now again, that's self-selected.

00:07:42.000 It's not randomly selected.

00:07:43.000 Those are people who are coming in with symptoms.

00:07:45.000 But that does suggest pretty wide and broad spread of this thing.

00:07:50.000 So they've also downgraded the number of deaths per day in terms of the peak.

00:07:54.000 So like three days ago, they were suggesting that the peak was going to happen, I believe, April 15th, and they'd suggested over 3,000 deaths, like 3,300 deaths on that day.

00:08:02.000 Instead, they're now projecting that the highest day of death is going to be on April 12th and will be 2,200 deaths.

00:08:09.000 Which is a lot lower, like a lot lower.

00:08:11.000 And then it will quickly drop off to the point where we are experiencing double-digit deaths if this model holds.

00:08:18.000 Which again, they've been dropping it consistently.

00:08:20.000 So we hope that they continue to drop it.

00:08:22.000 If this model were to be the one that actually holds, if this were accurate, then we would be dropping into double-digit deaths by May 21st.

00:08:28.000 Right?

00:08:29.000 Which is very, very good news.

00:08:31.000 Also, when it comes to the resources that are used, Same sort of deal.

00:08:35.000 They've dramatically downgraded the number of beds that will be needed, the number of ICU beds that will be needed, the number of ventilators that will be needed.

00:08:41.000 Remember, they had been suggesting I believe 29,000 ventilators would be needed during peak resource use, which would be in three days, April 11th, right?

00:08:47.000 Now they're saying they will need 16,500 ventilators, right?

00:08:51.000 Which is a dramatic decrease almost by 50%.

00:08:53.000 The same thing with the number of total hospital beds.

00:08:57.000 They dropped that to 140,000.

00:08:58.000 Now it's down to 94,000 ICU beds.

00:09:01.000 Same sort of deal.

00:09:02.000 They'd said that they would need, I think it was 50,000, something like that.

00:09:05.000 ICU beds, they've dropped that down to 19,000.

00:09:07.000 So the models are continually being reduced.

00:09:09.000 And that does suggest that there is some data that is entered into these models originally that is not right.

00:09:14.000 Now, does that mean that it was wrong to lock down?

00:09:17.000 No, it doesn't mean it was wrong to lock down.

00:09:19.000 Now the question is going to be how we get out of this thing, which is much more important than was it wrong to lock down.

00:09:24.000 In the presence of data that suggests the lockdown has been super successful.

00:09:27.000 That doesn't mean the lockdown was unsuccessful.

00:09:29.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:10:44.000 Okay.

00:10:45.000 So meanwhile, we are now seeing another good news that we are not actually being overrun in mass terms.

00:10:53.000 So one of the reasons to flatten the curve was to prevent us from being overrun, was to prevent the hospitals from being short on ventilators, rationing of ventilators, short on ICU beds, short on medical resources.

00:11:04.000 And as it turns out, Well, there have been hiccups in the process because distribution is never even or easy, right?

00:11:11.000 If the federal government says we're going to hand you a thousand ventilators, that doesn't mean they're going to go directly to the hospital department that is necessary over the course of the next 24 hours.

00:11:18.000 I mean, as we have seen with virtually every government disaster response, there are just Hold ups in the distribution chains.

00:11:26.000 This sort of stuff is very common, right?

00:11:27.000 It's what you saw in Puerto Rico when FEMA was shipping bottles over there, bottles of water.

00:11:31.000 And then six months later, with everybody not having water on the tarmac, there's just millions of bottles of water.

00:11:36.000 That sort of stuff does happen fairly frequently.

00:11:38.000 With that said, the response of the federal government overall has been quite good.

00:11:41.000 Here was Mike Pence yesterday listing all of the supplies that have been delivered.

00:11:46.000 The New York metro area, including New Jersey, just in the last five days, more than 6 million N95 masks, more than 6 million surgical masks, and 2.8 million gowns were distributed to that region as well.

00:12:01.000 Going next to New Orleans, some 837,000 N95 masks for healthcare workers, 165 surgical masks, other items including almost 6 million gloves have been distributed.

00:12:15.000 Just in the last five days, 1.6 million N95 masks have been routed into the healthcare system in Detroit.

00:12:22.000 Nearly 700,000 surgical masks and 24 million gloves, just as a portion of what's displayed.

00:12:30.000 Guys, by the way, remember ventilators, ventilators, ventilators, ventilators.

00:12:33.000 It turns out that on Monday night, both Cuomo and Bill de Blasio claimed that the need had been met for ventilators in the state.

00:12:38.000 So there's all this talk about ventilators and how we're going to be splitting ventilators and rationing ventilators.

00:12:43.000 That may still happen in particular areas if those areas see sudden spikes, for example, and they've not been distributed.

00:12:48.000 But Gavin Newsom in California has announced that he's been working with state governments all over the place to purchase en masse ventilators.

00:12:56.000 The United States government is supposed to be developing 100,000 ventilators.

00:12:59.000 That's going to be way more than we need.

00:13:01.000 Like, way, way, way more than we need.

00:13:02.000 That should go in the federal stockpile.

00:13:04.000 That's a good thing, by the way.

00:13:05.000 It's not a bad—just like we have lots of nuclear weapons we never have to use, better we should have too many ventilators on hand, and then we never have to use them, and then we have too few ventilators.

00:13:13.000 With that said, all of the panic talk about how we were going to run short on ventilators, the government response was fairly decent here, and also, as it turns out, the estimates were way off for how many ventilators were actually necessary.

00:13:23.000 Remember, Trump got ripped up and down when he suggested that when Cuomo said he needed 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators, he thought the numbers would be a lot lower than that.

00:13:30.000 Turns out numbers were kind of a lot lower than that.

00:13:32.000 So Trump may have been, you know, engaging in evidence-free happy talk, but his actual guess was not wrong on that one.

00:13:39.000 Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo came out yesterday, the governor of New York.

00:13:42.000 He said, we have not lost a single human being because of lack of care.

00:13:45.000 So for all of the talk about shortages, we've responded such that people are not dying because they're not getting the care they need.

00:13:52.000 The question is, are you saving everyone you can save?

00:13:57.000 And there the answer is yes.

00:14:00.000 And I take some solace in that fact.

00:14:03.000 Our health care system is operating.

00:14:06.000 I don't believe we lost a single person because we couldn't provide care.

00:14:12.000 People we lost we couldn't save despite our best efforts.

00:14:17.000 Okay, so that is good news, is that we have not been overrun, right?

00:14:21.000 Which was what I said yesterday.

00:14:23.000 God willing, we have flattened the curve such that the healthcare system is not overrun.

00:14:27.000 Now the question is, what comes next?

00:14:29.000 And we're hearing a constant drumbeat out of the administration now that the numbers were way too high, right?

00:14:32.000 Over the course of two weeks, that the numbers were way too high in terms of what they thought was going to happen.

00:14:36.000 Now, people who think the lockdowns need to be quasi-permanent policy, they're like, well, yeah, this is because of the lockdowns.

00:14:43.000 People who are not pro that policy are like, well, did we go too far?

00:14:46.000 The only way we're going to know that is with additional data.

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00:15:54.000 As I say, it is a drumbeat out of the administration now.

00:15:57.000 The CDC's Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC, he says the coronavirus death toll is going to be a lot lower than we expected if we continue to socially distance.

00:16:06.000 The American public are taking the social distancing recommendations to heart.

00:16:09.000 And I think that's the direct consequence why you're seeing the numbers are going to be much, much, much, much lower.

00:16:16.000 Okay, not only that, Dr. Fauci came out.

00:16:18.000 He says by next week we're going to be looking at the downside of the slope.

00:16:22.000 Here is Dr. Fauci yesterday.

00:16:23.000 As we get further on beyond this week, we should start to see the beginning of a turnaround, which is a good sign.

00:16:30.000 So, you know, it's very sobering to see the increase in deaths.

00:16:35.000 And we predicted over the weekend that this would really be a bad week.

00:16:39.000 And it is.

00:16:39.000 It's going to be a bad week for deaths.

00:16:42.000 But driving that and ahead of that is the fact that we're going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround.

00:16:47.000 So we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there's no doubt that that's having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.

00:16:58.000 Fauci also suggested one of the original models projected 100,000 to 200,000 deaths.

00:17:02.000 As we are getting more data and seeing the positive effects of mitigation, those numbers are going to be downgraded.

00:17:06.000 Right now, it's going to be a lot less than the original projection.

00:17:09.000 Which, again, is really good.

00:17:11.000 It does raise the question of, I thought that your models originally took into account the fact that we were socially distancing.

00:17:15.000 So that means another one of the other factors changed.

00:17:17.000 Right?

00:17:17.000 Because if your model, right, if there's only X, Y, and Z, if X was the factor of social distancing, and if that remained constant, then the model could only have changed with Y or Z, transmission rate or death rate, right?

00:17:29.000 I mean, those are the only factors in the model.

00:17:31.000 There are not a lot of other factors in the model since everybody is staying home.

00:17:35.000 Unless, you know, presumably, for some reason, you thought that the staying home was not going to mitigate this thing nearly as much, like you assumed that 50% of the population was going to stay home, and it turned out to be 100% of the population, but they've not really said that yet, and the UW model doesn't suggest that, the University of Washington model.

00:17:51.000 So, exactly what comes next?

00:17:53.000 How do we get out of this?

00:17:54.000 Well, Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ezekiel Emanuel's brother, I believe.

00:18:00.000 So, Ezekiel Emanuel, Who is a healthcare policy expert, one of the Obamacare minds.

00:18:05.000 Yesterday, he gave his dark vision.

00:18:07.000 He said there will be no religious services or dinner in restaurants for 12 to 18 months.

00:18:12.000 Here he was yesterday basically saying we're going to have to continue to tamp down the economy until we find a vaccine which could take upwards of a year.

00:18:18.000 Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more.

00:18:24.000 We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications.

00:18:30.000 If we prematurely end that physical distancing and the other measures keeping it at bay, deaths could skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands, if not a million.

00:18:40.000 We cannot return to normal until there's a vaccine.

00:18:44.000 Conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, none of that will resume until we find a vaccine, a treatment, or a cure.

00:18:55.000 Okay, so it may be true that that is the case, but we're going to have to look at how other countries are handling this.

00:19:00.000 And also, we are going to have to get better statistics on how all of this works, because there are really three questions that need to be asked.

00:19:06.000 First, what is the true coronavirus fatality rate?

00:19:09.000 That question is really important because it determines whether certain areas ought to be open or closed, whether we ought to pursue, in Sweden's style, a more liberalized society that presumes a very wide spread.

00:19:18.000 So for example, if we have widespread already, and it is impossible to tamp it down such that we can actually socially trace, And contact trace?

00:19:25.000 Well then, presumably we'd be better off just telling everybody who's most vulnerable, stay home, work from home, and telling everybody else, go out and get it, right?

00:19:31.000 Give each other, right?

00:19:33.000 That's kind of what Sweden is doing.

00:19:34.000 And right now, I've been very honestly perturbed by the media coverage of what's happening in Sweden, because Sweden assumed that there would be an uptick in deaths before there was a downtick.

00:19:44.000 I mean, I talked about this yesterday.

00:19:45.000 The second wave is the question nobody's asking right now.

00:19:47.000 Okay, so we flatten the curve, we get it underneath the medical necessities, Presumably, if there's a second wave, we're not going to max out our supply chains.

00:19:55.000 Great.

00:19:56.000 Now what?

00:19:57.000 What happens when there's a second wave?

00:19:59.000 So, if all you've done by flattening the curve is avoided some of the hospital overruns, which is great, but then there's a second wave, and everybody's going to get it anyway.

00:20:08.000 You know, if the assumption is everybody's going to get it anyway, then you have to ask, okay, so how long are we holding this down here?

00:20:13.000 When people look at Sweden and they say, well, they have a bigger first wave, the question is, okay, but the models don't end in August.

00:20:19.000 I can cite that UW model until the cows come home. 0.63

00:20:22.000 That IMHE model.

00:20:23.000 That model ends August 4th.

00:20:25.000 This thing ain't gonna end August 4th.

00:20:26.000 We've been told it's seasonal, which means it's coming back in the fall.

00:20:29.000 So what exactly are we gonna do when it comes back in the fall?

00:20:31.000 Lock down again for another, what, entire winter?

00:20:34.000 Lockdown until the vaccine is found in presumably January or February at the very earliest and then produced in March?

00:20:39.000 Lockdown all the way from September to March?

00:20:41.000 Who thinks that's going to be a thing?

00:20:42.000 We've already lost 30 million jobs.

00:20:44.000 Who thinks that's going to be a thing?

00:20:46.000 So we need to find out what the true coronavirus fatality rate is.

00:20:50.000 Now we've seen the case fatality rates, but those are not super accurate.

00:20:54.000 The reason that they are not super accurate is because the case fatality rates presume that we know how many people have been infected.

00:20:59.000 Which is not correct.

00:21:00.000 We don't know how many people have been infected.

00:21:02.000 We don't actually even know how many people are dead, right?

00:21:04.000 This is one of the problems.

00:21:05.000 So, right now, there is an argument going on as to whether the numerator in the fatality rate or the denominator, or both, are flawed.

00:21:13.000 We know for sure that the denominator is flawed.

00:21:14.000 We know for sure there are lots more people who have coronavirus than have been tested for coronavirus and confirmed to have coronavirus, right?

00:21:20.000 We know that for a fact.

00:21:22.000 And as we'll discuss in a second, people are now developing tests, as they should be doing, in order to get to the point where we know the answer to that question.

00:21:32.000 But as to that first question, it's now become a hot topic on Twitter, whether we're overcounting COVID deaths.

00:21:38.000 The theory that we are overcounting COVID deaths is that if you die having COVID, That doesn't necessarily mean that you died from COVID.

00:21:45.000 So if you're old and you're 85 and you get the flu, but you died from heart failure or something, does that mean that you died of the flu or with the flu?

00:21:53.000 Now, is it true that we may be over-broadly characterizing COVID deaths by some?

00:21:59.000 I mean, it's possible.

00:22:00.000 I mean, Dr. Birx did say yesterday that anyone who died with COVID is measured as a COVID victim.

00:22:04.000 As we'll see in a second, it's also, I think, more significantly possible that we are under-counting COVID deaths at this point.

00:22:09.000 But here is Dr. Birx talking about how we are categorizing COVID deaths.

00:22:14.000 There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let's say the virus called you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.

00:22:34.000 Right now, we're still recording it and we'll, I mean, the great thing about having forms that come in and a form that has the ability to market as COVID-19 infection, the intent is right now that those, if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.

00:22:56.000 Okay, so people have been citing this to suggest that our count is too high because some countries are not categorizing these things that way.

00:23:02.000 However, as we'll see in a second, There's also some pretty good evidence that the count actually may be significantly low.

00:23:07.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:24:22.000 Okay, so the counter evidence to the idea that we are under counting deaths comes courtesy of Gothamist.

00:24:27.000 They suggest that there are a lot of people dying at home.

00:24:31.000 Now, the city of New York is reversing its position and will probably start counting COVID deaths at home in addition to confirmed ones, which will increase the count.

00:24:40.000 Originally, Gothamist had suggested that if you die at home and they say it was probably COVID, that was not being included in the city counts.

00:24:45.000 Now they are changing that in a statement.

00:24:47.000 Stephanie Buell, spokeswoman for the New York City Health Department, said the city would no longer report only cases that were confirmed by lab tests.

00:24:53.000 She said the Office of Chief Medical Commissioner and NYC Health Department are working together to include in their report deaths that may be linked to COVID, but not lab-confirmed, that occur at home.

00:25:03.000 The new protocol is likely to add thousands of people to the toll.

00:25:06.000 That announcement came after New York saw the largest single day of deaths so far from COVID.

00:25:11.000 727 people died in a 24-hour period.

00:25:13.000 But that didn't include many of the cases in which first responders encountered someone who had already died at home or non-hospital settings.

00:25:19.000 Apparently, that happened 280 times on Monday.

00:25:22.000 According to data from the fire department, which means that the total number of deaths would presumably be well over or about or well over a thousand deaths in New York City.

00:25:33.000 So apparently over the last two weeks, New York fire department officials said that over 2,000 New York City residents died in their homes, 2,192 compared to 453 during the same time period last year.

00:25:44.000 On Tuesday evening, the city reported that 3,544 people have died of coronavirus.

00:25:49.000 So if you're actually to include the increase in count, then you'd be looking at an additional 1,600, over 5,000 people dead in New York City alone.

00:25:57.000 So, as I say, the evidence seems better that we are undercounting COVID deaths right now than overcounting those COVID deaths.

00:26:03.000 But bottom line is we don't actually know the numerator in the fatality rate right now, which brings us to the denominator.

00:26:08.000 The denominator is the really big one because the numerator may change, but it's not going to change by orders of magnitude.

00:26:14.000 It's not going to be as though there were 13,000 deaths in the United States, now there are 130,000 deaths because we counted wrong.

00:26:19.000 Well, you may end up with 13,000 deaths in the United States, and maybe there are 15,000 deaths in the United States.

00:26:25.000 It's the denominator that matters.

00:26:26.000 And the reason the denominator matters is because, number one, it gives you a better indicator of exactly what your chances are of dying if you actually obtain this thing.

00:26:34.000 Which makes a big difference as to sort of risk assessment.

00:26:36.000 Like if you tell me right now that if I walk outside, there's a 1.4% shot that I'm going to be hit by a car and die, I'll probably stay inside.

00:26:43.000 If you tell me that there is a 1 in 10,000 shot that if I get hit by a car, I'm going to walk outside, get hit by a car and die, I'll probably walk out the front door.

00:26:51.000 Right?

00:26:52.000 So it really depends on the denominator here.

00:26:55.000 We don't know what the denominator is right now.

00:26:58.000 And this is where some people are working hard to put together numbers on the denominator.

00:27:03.000 So there are several different efforts that are being put forward along these lines.

00:27:06.000 According to Science Magazine, there is an attempt by the World Health Organization called Solidarity 2 to put together CERO surveys, studies that look for antibodies to COVID-2 The United States is also launching unprecedented efforts.

00:27:21.000 One serosurvey is already underway in six metropolitan areas, including New York City, the hardest-hit city in the United States.

00:27:26.000 A second, even larger one, is on its heels.

00:27:28.000 Together, they should give a strong nationwide effort to track closely how many Americans have become infected as the pandemic unfolds.

00:27:36.000 Zero surveys may also help efforts to develop vaccines, and separately, attempts to devise therapies to stop the virus from causing harm.

00:27:43.000 Science has talked to Michael Bush, a transfusion specialist based at UCSF, and he suggests that this is actually pretty important because once we have serologic testing, then we'll know the numbers better.

00:27:56.000 So this is a very good thing.

00:27:58.000 Meanwhile, we are learning that there are certain people who are really attempting to promote promote zero surveys and new information about how we get these antibody tests.

00:28:10.000 So Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, he says we've actually developed an antibody test and we are starting to roll that out.

00:28:16.000 This is a very good thing.

00:28:17.000 New York State developed a Department of Health developed an antibody testing regimen that Department of Health has approved for use in New York State.

00:28:31.000 That's what we're doing.

00:28:32.000 This tests the blood to determine whether or not you have the antibodies, which means you had the virus and resolved the virus.

00:28:43.000 That's why you would have the antibodies for the virus.

00:28:45.000 That would mean that you're no longer contagious, and you can't catch the virus because you have the antibodies in your system, which means you can get to work, you can go back to school, you can do whatever you want.

00:29:00.000 So the question is, what are we going to do with the antibody test?

00:29:03.000 There have been a couple of questions about what exactly the antibody tests are for.

00:29:06.000 One of those questions is, are we going to basically create a certificate that says you can go back to work at this point?

00:29:13.000 If so, is that sort of a discriminatory model is one of the questions.

00:29:16.000 And is that really practical?

00:29:18.000 And we don't even know at this point whether the immunity lasts for very long.

00:29:21.000 So it's possible that the immunity lasts for six months and then you get it again in September, right?

00:29:24.000 People get the flu every year sometimes because the strains are constantly changing.

00:29:28.000 With that said, the antibody tests are useful for a broader reason, and that is we must know exactly how many people in the population have had this thing so that we can tell what the best policy will be.

00:29:39.000 So David Neelaman is the founder of JetBlue and Azul Airways, and he has a piece over at Daily Wire that's pretty important.

00:29:45.000 He writes, thanks to the work of three Stanford University professors and recently FDA-approved antibody tests, We will soon finally know the real size of the denominator of all of those infected by COVID-19, and that could be the game changer we need.

00:29:56.000 The denominator is the total number of people who have been exposed to the virus, many of whom never knew they even had it.

00:30:01.000 The numerator, tragically, is the total number of people who have died from the disease.

00:30:04.000 Divide the numerator into the denominator, we get the death or case fatality rate.

00:30:08.000 As the founder of several airlines in four countries, my company and our industry have been particularly hard hit by the spread of COVID-19.

00:30:13.000 Since the outbreak, I've spent all my days and a lot of my nights trying to find a solution to save as many as possible of the 40,000 jobs for which I am responsible and do what I can to help avoid an economic catastrophe in the making.

00:30:23.000 My search for a solution, writes David Nieleman, my search for a solution has led me to three amazing and dedicated professors and scientists from Stanford University School of Medicine with impeccable credentials.

00:30:32.000 I've come to know them personally.

00:30:33.000 Drs.

00:30:34.000 John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Ben-David, using their epidemiology models and other evidence from China, Italy, Iceland, and the U.S., have questioned from the beginning the true number of those who have been infected by COVID-19.

00:30:44.000 I've talked to Jay Bhattacharya before on the radio show.

00:30:47.000 Everyone agrees that the number of confirmed cases reported is not a correct value for the total number of infected.

00:30:52.000 But by how much?

00:30:53.000 Recent research says that up to 50% of those infected are asymptomatic, and of the remaining 50%, 80% have mild symptoms and are unlikely to have been tested.

00:31:01.000 This creates a confirmation bias because we're only testing for people with the most severe symptoms.

00:31:06.000 Ionidas, Bhattacharya, and Ben-David believe that the actual number of cases is very likely off by an order of the magnitude of 10, or maybe even times many more.

00:31:15.000 So why is this important?

00:31:16.000 Well, as of today, the U.S.

00:31:17.000 is approaching 400,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 10,000 deaths.

00:31:21.000 What if the Stanford doctors are right and the actual numbers of those infected is actually 3 million or 10 million?

00:31:26.000 It would be a game changer in our fight against the virus.

00:31:28.000 If it could be proven that 20 or 30 percent of New Yorkers were actually infected instead of less than 1 percent, it would tell us that the peak is closer than we think.

00:31:35.000 And most important, the case fatality rate would be a tiny fraction of the percentage based on deaths as a fraction of confirmed cases.

00:31:41.000 Most important, this information would provide governors, mayors, and public health officials valuable new data in determining the number of ICU beds that might be required.

00:31:48.000 As of yesterday, New York had 4,000 patients in ICU beds.

00:31:51.000 Governor Cuomo rightly believes that he could need 30,000 ICU beds at the peak of the epidemic with less than 1% of the population with confirmed cases.

00:31:58.000 But if the actual number of people infected is much higher, then you'd need far fewer ICU beds.

00:32:04.000 But now the FDA has approved this quick test, and while caution should be taken in relying on these tests, they're more than sufficient for determining the correct denominator from a population sample.

00:32:13.000 So Bhattacharya and Ben-David have started a study in Santa Clara County in California using antibody tests.

00:32:18.000 They've assembled a team that collected 2,500 blood samples over two days.

00:32:21.000 Once they have the results, they're gonna compare those who test positive for the antibodies with the number of confirmed cases and give them scientific information that could predict better how many people actually have this.

00:32:30.000 Also, unspoken is the reality, which is that if tons and tons of people have this, Then the idea of widespread testing and contact tracing is probably not the best solution, especially because, again, everybody is asymptomatic.

00:32:42.000 So unless you're willing to put down tens of millions of tests every week and then quarantine people and socially track them, then perhaps the best case scenario is the sort of Sweden scenario where we take everybody who's most vulnerable and we tell them stay home and everybody else goes back out to work.

00:32:57.000 That could very well be what we are talking about right here.

00:33:00.000 Again, because nobody knows what that second wave looks like in the fall.

00:33:03.000 That is the second question to be asked.

00:33:06.000 One is case fatality.

00:33:07.000 One is the second wave and what exactly that looks like.

00:33:11.000 And then finally, what exactly can we do here?

00:33:14.000 Because once we've established the case fatality rate, we still have to figure out what does a second wave look like, and can it even be prevented?

00:33:20.000 And Dr. Fauci says we're going to be in good shape to open the schools in the fall, which is kind of an interesting take from Dr. Fauci.

00:33:25.000 Here he was explaining that schools might be reopened.

00:33:29.000 I fully expect, though I'm humble enough to know that I can't accurately predict, that by the time we get to the fall, that we will have this under control enough that it certainly will not be the way it is now, where people are shutting schools.

00:33:45.000 My optimistic side tells me that we'll be able to renew to a certain extent, but it's going to be different.

00:33:52.000 So that is, um, you know, that is good news, but it does raise the question, okay, so let's say all these kids go to school and then they come home and grandpa and grandma are there, like, are they all going to get infected?

00:34:01.000 And Fauci didn't answer that question.

00:34:03.000 So presumably what we're going to, I think in the end, we're going to end up with a quick and dirty policy, right?

00:34:06.000 There's a lot of talk about widespread testing and national coronavirus surveillance systems.

00:34:10.000 Well, if we already have community spread, and if it turns out that as people suspect far more people are infected than we currently think, well, then what you're going to end up with is there's nothing we can do about community infection.

00:34:19.000 It's already out there.

00:34:20.000 The case fatality rate is low.

00:34:21.000 We have tremendous amounts of medical resources that have now been made available.

00:34:25.000 The thing died off for the summer.

00:34:26.000 Prepare for the second wave.

00:34:28.000 And people who are most vulnerable need to stay home.

00:34:30.000 I think that's probably where we end up in terms of practical policy.

00:34:33.000 And in terms of the economy, that probably is not the worst thing.

00:34:37.000 Again, this is why we need more data.

00:34:39.000 Data, data, data, data.

00:34:40.000 It sounds a lot better than, I mean, there should be real unease over the fact that there are so many people who are looking out to create a national coronavirus surveillance system.

00:34:50.000 Like, I don't know what that's going to look like.

00:34:52.000 I mean, if you were worried about the invasion of privacy that was attendant on 9-11, then I think that we should be a little bit worried about the invasion of privacy that is attendant on, we're going to surveil you everywhere you go if you test positive for coronavirus or if you have a fever.

00:35:07.000 Because again, these tests, the dirty little secret here is that the coronavirus tests are not supremely accurate.

00:35:11.000 Like 20% of people who are testing for this thing negative are actually positive for coronavirus.

00:35:15.000 They're not supremely accurate at this point.

00:35:18.000 Okay, so I was going to get to more on coronavirus and perhaps we still will, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that in breaking news, Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race.

00:35:28.000 So that is a thing that has now happened.

00:35:31.000 Brilliant, brilliant, that Bernie Sanders waited until after that Wisconsin primary, like the day after the Wisconsin primary, where it was obvious he was going to get shellacked anyway, to drop out.

00:35:41.000 So lots of people waited in line, thanks to dramatic confusion over what should be done during a primary, during the COVID-19 era.

00:35:48.000 And then Bernie got out.

00:35:49.000 So just adding insult to injury, he waits until after everybody stands in line to vote for him in Wisconsin, and then he gets out of the race.

00:35:57.000 He's gonna give some sort of statement, but pudding for everybody, I think, is the short statement.

00:36:01.000 Everybody gets pudding.

00:36:02.000 Goodbye, buddy.

00:36:03.000 We will see you later.

00:36:04.000 I mean, good.

00:36:06.000 I mean, Cuba hardest hit.

00:36:06.000 Good.

00:36:08.000 The Castros hardest hit.

00:36:10.000 Venezuela hardest hit.

00:36:12.000 How terrible.

00:36:13.000 How terrible that Bernie is out.

00:36:15.000 I really don't have much more than that.

00:36:19.000 The only reason he was staying in, presumably, was to get 25% of the delegate base, and then he could use that authority to kind of throw his weight around at the convention.

00:36:27.000 He could still try to do that.

00:36:28.000 He could still walk into the convention and say that I'm not going to throw my Bernie Sanders supporters behind you, Joe Biden, unless you do X, Y, and Z. So I don't think that he needed the formal delegate count in order to do that.

00:36:38.000 With that said, He doesn't have a lot of weight now. 0.95

00:36:40.000 And Joe Biden would be a fool to start catering to the Bernie Sanders side of the party.

00:36:43.000 He's got to count on the fact that people don't like Trump to unify the party, not on catering to the Bernie Sanders sides. 0.96

00:36:48.000 Because right now, Biden's entire campaign rests on the feeling that he is not volatile, that he is not radical, that he is non-threatening, right?

00:36:57.000 That's the stuff where people are worried about Bernie Sanders.

00:37:01.000 So if Biden starts catering to that, he actually undercuts his own message.

00:37:04.000 Okay, we'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:38:36.000 We'll get to more in the breaking news side of the business in a second.

00:38:40.000 First, if you have not yet had a chance to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and check it out.

00:38:47.000 Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off a few weeks ago.

00:38:49.000 All the other hosted live streams over at Daily Wire, we've been continuing all this week at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific.

00:38:53.000 Yesterday, I did the All Access Live and I actually wore a t-shirt.

00:38:57.000 I know.

00:38:58.000 I know.

00:38:58.000 It's an actual thing.

00:38:59.000 I wore a t-shirt.

00:39:00.000 The show is intended for our All Access members.

00:39:02.000 During this national emergency and the time of isolation, we've opened it up to everybody and we've accelerated the launch.

00:39:07.000 So please let us know what you think of it.

00:39:09.000 If you're around at 8 p.m.

00:39:10.000 Pacific tonight, join us on the All Access Live show over at dailywire.com.

00:39:10.000 Eastern, 5 p.m.

00:39:14.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:39:17.000 So as I say, the breaking news that Bernie Sanders has indeed dropped out of the presidential race, according to NBC News.

00:39:28.000 The Vermont Independent Senator's 2020 bid started off strong.

00:39:31.000 He narrowly missed first place in Iowa before picking up wins in New Hampshire and Nevada.

00:39:35.000 All the while, his campaign continued to rake in millions in small-dollar donations and pack rallies full of supporters as he ascended to national front-runner status amid a crowded Democratic field.

00:39:44.000 In 2020, a number of candidates backed policies similar to his own.

00:39:48.000 But in the end, he ended up falling when the rest of the party Basically united against him because he was just too radical.

00:39:56.000 His campaign officially stalled in South Carolina, fueled by a critical endorsement from Representative James Clyburn.

00:40:01.000 Biden won the Palmetto State decisively, and then the moderate wing of the party consolidated around him.

00:40:06.000 Warren dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday.

00:40:07.000 She declined to endorse any candidate.

00:40:10.000 A week later, on March 10th, Biden dominated in five of the six states that voted, including Michigan, one of Sanders' biggest 2016 victories, to grow his delegate lead over the Vermont senator.

00:40:18.000 And then he lost brutally in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona on March 17th.

00:40:24.000 A day after the contest, with the next voting night weeks away, Sanders' campaign manager wrote the candidate was going to be having conversations about moving forward.

00:40:30.000 Now he has decided not to move forward.

00:40:31.000 Presumably he's going to blame the lack of moving forward on COVID.

00:40:34.000 He's going to say, if it weren't for COVID, I would have still been able to hold my rallies and I would have been able to get you all out to vote.

00:40:39.000 And our socialist, never has our socialist agenda been more popular or more necessary.

00:40:43.000 And people are going to be like, yeah, Bernie, go away.

00:40:46.000 Which is how people have felt for several weeks at this point.

00:40:48.000 So he bid a non-fond farewell to Bernie Sanders.

00:40:51.000 We don't have the USSR anthem on hand.

00:40:53.000 If we did, we'd be playing it in salute to the geriatric communist. 0.66

00:40:57.000 Okay, meanwhile, as I say, back to the actual stuff that matters.

00:41:00.000 When it comes to how we get out of this thing, some suggestions have been, I early on suggested that we needed to move from China to South Korea, right?

00:41:07.000 That meant like contact tracing and heavy testing.

00:41:10.000 That all depends on the denominator.

00:41:12.000 If it turns out that not a lot of people have had COVID yet, that's going to be what we have to do, right?

00:41:15.000 We locked it down to the point where basically the cases are close to zero, and then we can start widespread testing.

00:41:20.000 If somebody gets it, we lock them down and we contact trace them.

00:41:23.000 If, however, the denominator is really large, if it turns out that tons of people have this and tons of people who are asymptomatic have this, then contact tracing is not going to be useful anymore because just there are too many people out there to trace all of them.

00:41:34.000 So we have to, that's why the data are, I keep focusing on the data because the data really are the key here.

00:41:40.000 The data are what matter.

00:41:42.000 Meanwhile, White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner has created a task force reaching out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, whether hospitals can accommodate them according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.

00:41:57.000 Now, that's a good thing.

00:41:58.000 I mean, you want to know which hospitals are being overrun and need supplies.

00:42:01.000 But the question is whether the federal government is basically going to start monitoring every citizen in the country for COVID.

00:42:08.000 Health privacy laws grant broad exceptions for national security purposes, but the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about civil liberties, which presumably it should.

00:42:18.000 I mean, these should be open debates.

00:42:21.000 Jessica Rich, former director of the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Protection Bureau says, This is a genuine crisis.

00:42:25.000 We have to work through it and do our best to protect people's health.

00:42:28.000 Doing that doesn't mean we have to destroy privacy.

00:42:30.000 Okay, so bottom line here is that everyone is struggling to figure out exactly how reopening happens.

00:42:36.000 This is true abroad too.

00:42:37.000 Denmark is trying to figure out how they reopen.

00:42:38.000 Italy is trying to figure out how they reopen.

00:42:41.000 China has been reopening, but only sort of.

00:42:44.000 And meanwhile, you know, all of their propaganda is being echoed by the media.

00:42:47.000 There's still presumably death in China from all of this.

00:42:51.000 I will say, points to the troll crew over in China. 0.84

00:42:53.000 The People's Republic of China released a video last night about enjoying food in Wuhan.

00:42:58.000 Not kidding you.

00:42:59.000 It's like, well, the ball's on those people.

00:43:01.000 I mean, it was like, come enjoy our food in Wuhan.

00:43:03.000 I think it was people enjoying the food in Wuhan a little too much that led to, you know, the worst crisis in the history of humanity in some ways.

00:43:10.000 In any case, in Wuhan, it's now becoming clear that the battle is far from over.

00:43:14.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the city has announced only three confirmed cases.

00:43:18.000 Since March 18th, which is a lie.

00:43:19.000 Authorities have ended the 77-day lockdown on the city, allowing inbound and outbound travel for healthy people after easing some residential restrictions to revive the crippled local economy.

00:43:28.000 But now they've been tightening restrictions on some housing complexes.

00:43:31.000 They've said others will remain in place after confirming dozens of new asymptomatic cases.

00:43:34.000 And that's the big problem, is the asymptomatic cases.

00:43:36.000 Unless you're going to have tons and tons and tons of people testing every single day, asymptomatic cases are going to arrive and presumably everybody is going to infect each other again.

00:43:45.000 So that is why, once again, apparently the study that's being done, the serology tests that are being done, the antibody tests that are being done in Santa Clara County and all of this, those will be available on Friday.

00:43:56.000 I am fascinated to learn what the actual numbers are in the denominator because the fact is we cannot continue this way as an economy.

00:44:03.000 We cannot continue this way in terms of lifestyle.

00:44:04.000 The American people are not going to sit home for the next year.

00:44:07.000 It's not going to happen.

00:44:08.000 Now, maybe they go to restaurants and they socially distance.

00:44:10.000 Maybe we don't go to ball games.

00:44:12.000 But if you think that people are going to be locked in their home with their children for a year not going to school, good luck, Charlie.

00:44:18.000 That is not happening.

00:44:20.000 Meanwhile, we are already seeing the small business aid program stretched to its limits because the amount of money that is pouring through the fire hose The nozzle on the fire hose just is not wide enough, and Congress is weighing adding more than $250 billion more to small business aid to keep those businesses alive.

00:44:36.000 Meanwhile, a third of U.S.

00:44:37.000 apartment renters didn't bother to pay their April rent.

00:44:40.000 There's a patchwork of federal and local laws preventing eviction right now.

00:44:43.000 Those laws are getting extraordinary in places like California.

00:44:47.000 Almost all California foreclosures and evictions have now been put on hold for the foreseeable future.

00:44:51.000 The state's Judicial Council on Monday issued emergency orders that stop lenders' efforts to foreclose on mortgages and landlords' ability to evict tenants, except in cases where public health or safety are involved.

00:45:01.000 Also, the governor has issued edicts which include stiff limitations on lender foreclosures and tenant evictions.

00:45:08.000 And now they are putting, I mean it is putting property owners and banks at financial risk because not only are they suggesting that they are going to push off the evictions, not only that, they are also suggesting that they're going to allow people not to be evicted for a full 90 days beyond the term of the national emergency.

00:45:26.000 So once the national emergency is over, you still get to live in your home rent-free for three months.

00:45:30.000 Which is a great way to destroy all development in the state of California and destroy the real estate market in the state of California.

00:45:36.000 Daniel Ukelson is an apartment association's executive director.

00:45:41.000 He said, Which of course is true. 0.96

00:45:54.000 And it's going to lead to presumably some sort of government bailout on that end as well.

00:45:58.000 The council's rules apply for 90 days after the state of emergency is lifted.

00:46:02.000 The new rules mean borrowers and tenants do not have to respond to legal demands for payments during that period.

00:46:07.000 And the rights to fight foreclosure and evictions are extended past the council's freeze period, which means it could be six months.

00:46:12.000 People could be living in their apartments for six months with no rent because of the attempts that are being made by the California government.

00:46:17.000 This thing has to end and has to end forthwith as soon as the data make it possible for us to end it.

00:46:22.000 And we should be looking to how we end this thing in the broadest possible way as soon as the data allow.

00:46:30.000 And I keep saying as soon as the data allow, because again, I'm not somebody saying go rush out into the street, go back to work, everybody enjoy your life.

00:46:35.000 I don't think that's what the data show right now.

00:46:36.000 But let's see what the data show in terms of what is realistic, because what I'm hearing from a lot of people doesn't sound very realistic to me.

00:46:41.000 Hundreds of millions of tests being trotted out, and people taking them voluntarily on a daily basis.

00:46:46.000 You being tested for coronavirus every time you enter a restaurant.

00:46:49.000 What if I decide to go to two restaurants in one day?

00:46:52.000 What if, as we say, a huge number of Americans have already had this thing, and many are immune?

00:46:57.000 Or what if a huge number of Americans have it and are asymptomatic and are carrying it and there's no way to test them because they don't even show up on tests because the tests aren't sensitive enough?

00:47:05.000 The Wall Street Journal is pointing out just how crazy this is.

00:47:09.000 A sharp reduction in new infections is a critical first step, they say, but health experts say other steps will be needed to prevent another devastating outbreak that shuts the economy down all over again.

00:47:18.000 That includes building testing and surveillance systems and a readiness to reintroduce social distancing and other mitigations on a smaller scale if necessary to give businesses and individuals confidence they can return to work without risking infection.

00:47:29.000 Dr. Fauci says it's not like a light switch on and off.

00:47:31.000 It's a gradual pulling back on certain restrictions to try and get society a bit back to normal.

00:47:36.000 But none of these things are available.

00:47:39.000 Are we really going to have these tests ready in September?

00:47:41.000 I mean, he says we're going to be back to school.

00:47:43.000 Again, once kids go back to school, this whole thing is over.

00:47:46.000 Because kids are going to infect each other.

00:47:48.000 They're going to be asymptomatic carriers.

00:47:50.000 They're going to go see grandma and grandpa.

00:47:51.000 That's what's going to happen.

00:47:52.000 I have kids, three of them under the age of seven.

00:47:55.000 I have a six, a three, and a newborn.

00:47:57.000 And grandparents are over a lot right now.

00:47:59.000 That's okay.

00:47:59.000 What happens when they go back to school?

00:48:01.000 That is the big question.

00:48:03.000 And I've yet to see anybody lay out a plan, and that's why I keep saying it.

00:48:06.000 Data, data, data, data, and then a plan.

00:48:08.000 If we hit these numbers, we do X. If we hit these numbers, we do Y. How about that?

00:48:13.000 I thought this is what the government is supposed to be good at, but apparently not.

00:48:16.000 Okay, it's time to get to some things that I like and some things that I hate.

00:48:21.000 So, things that I like and I hate.

00:48:23.000 Let's talk about President Trump here.

00:48:25.000 So, President Trump said some good things yesterday and he said some bad things yesterday.

00:48:29.000 I mean, this is like epic level good Trump, bad Trump.

00:48:32.000 And sometimes he says stuff and you're like, yeah, that sounds pretty fantastic.

00:48:34.000 Good for you.

00:48:35.000 And sometimes he says stuff and you're like, why are you doing this?

00:48:37.000 Why, why, why, why, why?

00:48:38.000 Why is it that every other major Western leader has experienced a 15 point boost in the polls and President Trump experienced like a five point boost in the polls and now it's dissipated?

00:48:46.000 Well, Part of that would have to do with the fact that President Trump has an unfortunate tendency to take his foot and shove it all the way down his throat.

00:48:52.000 Sometimes he says things that are wonderful, right, when he objects to nationalization of industry because he has a gut-level love for America and American business. 0.93

00:48:59.000 And sometimes he says things that are super dumbassical.

00:49:02.000 And it's very difficult for the American public to feel solid and stable when he does this sort of stuff.

00:49:09.000 It's all fun and games when you're on Twitter, but in the middle of a global pandemic, it seems like... Like, I had a theory for years about Trump that basically just ignore what he says and follow what he does and you're a happy camper.

00:49:18.000 It becomes a lot harder when people are feeling this disquieted and when national leadership matters, right?

00:49:21.000 I mean, this is why they got the Queen of England out there speaking for only the fourth time in the last 190 years.

00:49:27.000 So anyway, President Trump said some good stuff yesterday.

00:49:30.000 He said some bad stuff yesterday.

00:49:31.000 Good stuff that he said.

00:49:32.000 So first, he said he'd love to reopen the country with a big bang.

00:49:34.000 Now, first of all, I think this is good when he says this kind of stuff.

00:49:36.000 The reason I think it's good is because if we see that politicians actually want to keep things closed and just spend enormous amounts of money, we start to think to ourselves, maybe I shouldn't stay home.

00:49:45.000 Maybe this is all a scam.

00:49:47.000 The fact that Trump does not Obviously want to keep people locked up is one of the key reasons that people are staying locked up right now.

00:49:55.000 Because people are like, OK, well, at least I know that guy doesn't actually want to just chain me in my house and then toss me twelve hundred bucks a month.

00:50:01.000 There's President Trump yesterday saying he'd love to reopen the country with a big bang.

00:50:05.000 Well, I'd love to open with a big bang, one beautiful country and just open, but it's very possible.

00:50:12.000 So we're looking at two concepts.

00:50:14.000 We're looking at the concept where you open up sections, and we're also looking at the concept where you open up everything.

00:50:20.000 I think New York is getting ready, if not already, but getting ready to peak.

00:50:25.000 And once it peaks, it'll start coming down, and then it's going to come down fast.

00:50:31.000 So that is, you know, President Trump at his best, I think, providing hope to the American people.

00:50:34.000 That's a good thing.

00:50:35.000 He always said that he was a cheerleader for the American people.

00:50:38.000 I think that's good.

00:50:38.000 I think that's true.

00:50:39.000 Other good things that President Trump said yesterday.

00:50:41.000 So he said that he is looking at withholding money to the WHO.

00:50:44.000 Well, indeed, unless conditions change at the WHO, we should be looking at withholding money.

00:50:48.000 They've become a Chinese cat's paw.

00:50:50.000 World Health Organization, because they really are They called it wrong.

00:50:57.000 They called it wrong.

00:50:58.000 They really, they missed the call.

00:51:01.000 They could have called it months earlier.

00:51:02.000 They would have known.

00:51:04.000 And they should have known.

00:51:06.000 And they probably did know.

00:51:08.000 So we'll be looking into that very carefully.

00:51:11.000 And we're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO.

00:51:15.000 We're going to put a very powerful hold on it.

00:51:18.000 And we're going to see.

00:51:20.000 So that is, in fact, again, I think it's not a bad thing.

00:51:24.000 WHO has been a giant failure.

00:51:26.000 So according to the National Review, they have an editorial over there, they say that the WHO started off in really doing really great things like eradicating smallpox and moving toward the eradication of leprosy and river blindness, but they've really disgraced themselves.

00:51:40.000 On December 30th, Chinese doctor Lei Wenliang warned colleagues about the outbreak of an illness resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome.

00:51:46.000 Public health officials rely on the acuity of doctors, likely, but Chinese authorities didn't reward him.

00:51:50.000 They summoned him to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan on accusations he'd made false statements and disrupting the public order.

00:51:56.000 The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, then followed up with numerous other arrests and publicly warned it would punish anyone spreading rumors on social media.

00:52:02.000 By mid-January, Chinese doctors knew COVID-19 was spreading between humans.

00:52:06.000 On January 14th, The Who stated that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of coronavirus.

00:52:11.000 Two weeks later, The WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who's the only non-medical doctor ever to lead WHO, flew to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping, who so impressed Tedros, he lauded Chinese authorities for setting a new standard for outbreak control and praised their openness for sharing information.

00:52:26.000 Lee might have disagreed with the sentiment, but it was too late.

00:52:29.000 He had already died after contracting COVID-19.

00:52:32.000 When the WHO Emergency Committee discussed whether to declare COVID a public health emergency January 23rd, international observers had definitively discredited Chinese health data, but Tedros continued relying on those data in arguing against declaring an emergency.

00:52:44.000 Finally, he declared an emergency on January 30th, and he continued as late as February 20th to argue that Chinese actions were slowing the spread of coronavirus to the rest of the world.

00:52:53.000 National Review correctly says the WHO has lent its imprimatur to Chinese disinformation and blessed China's slow response to its domestic outbreak, which likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases, according to a University of Southampton study.

00:53:04.000 So, good for Trump for putting the screws to the WHO.

00:53:08.000 It definitely deserves it.

00:53:09.000 Now, President Trump also was right to point out in his press conference yesterday that Joe Biden has changed his position on the travel ban.

00:53:16.000 The media basically just glossed right over that, that Joe Biden had completely flipped on the travel ban from China.

00:53:22.000 One thing with Joe Biden that I respect on Friday, he issued a statement that he thought I was right on closing the border to China.

00:53:29.000 So I respect the fact that he was able to do that.

00:53:32.000 You know, he took the opposite view and then he was able to do that.

00:53:34.000 So I thought that was actually, I thought that was very nice.

00:53:38.000 Okay.

00:53:39.000 So all of that is, all of that is fine.

00:53:40.000 And the subtweet of Biden there, the kind of the subtle knife between the ribs, all of that is fine.

00:53:45.000 Then there is the bad drum.

00:53:46.000 And again, this has been pretty epic, good Trump, bad Trump.

00:53:48.000 So yesterday during his press conference, Trump talked about how well he gets along with Andrew Cuomo, who he has been in sort of a tete-a-tete match with.

00:53:55.000 And then he talked about, also, some governors are bad and they're acting like political animals.

00:53:59.000 They're really bad.

00:54:00.000 Again, none of this is useful.

00:54:04.000 None of this is useful.

00:54:07.000 Steady leadership would be very good at a time like this.

00:54:10.000 And in terms of action, the leadership has been fairly steady.

00:54:13.000 I mean, as steady as it can be in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic.

00:54:16.000 But when the president says this kind of stuff, it's just not useful.

00:54:19.000 I think we've gotten along very well with Andrew.

00:54:22.000 And most of the governors, I mean, a couple I could tell you were, wouldn't matter what you did, you could give them ten times more than they asked.

00:54:32.000 If the newspapers called and wanted a quote, they'd give you a bad quote, because that's the way they are.

00:54:36.000 You know, they're political animals.

00:54:38.000 And it's, you know, this is beyond politics, what we've been going through here.

00:54:42.000 Like, the constant feeling of war, war, war from Trump is actually not useful.

00:54:46.000 Like, he'd have a leg to stand on when he says we need to unite in the face of this if, again, he were a more uniting figure.

00:54:51.000 Meanwhile, there's continued chaos inside the administration.

00:54:54.000 The top leader of the Navy had to step down after he went aboard a ship and proceeded to rail against a Navy captain who had been fired for sending out a missive talking about how the aircraft carrier needed basically to be docked.

00:55:09.000 According to Politico, an aircraft carrier sidelined by a coronavirus outbreak, a promising captain fired for requesting help as infections spread among his 5,000 sailors.

00:55:17.000 A service leader lists once more after the acting Navy Secretary resigned Tuesday following an uproar over a profanity-laced address to the ship's crew.

00:55:24.000 The Navy has weathered its share of crises and in the past few months saw the previous Navy Secretary Forced out over his handling of a war crimes case, and the man selected to be its top admiral instead retired due to an improper professional relationship with a former staffer accused of making unwanted sexual advances to several women.

00:55:39.000 But the resignation of Secretary Thomas Modley leaves the service lurching in the middle of a pandemic.

00:55:45.000 I mean, it was bad stuff.

00:55:47.000 Basically, there was this guy, Brett Crozier, we talked about this, the captain, who had blasted out an email to Navy personnel who were not in the chain of command asking for aid and suggesting that the carrier needed to be docked. 0.97

00:55:57.000 And the head of the Navy then proceeded to visit the ship, and he called Crozier's actions naive and stupid and ripped into the guy over the loudspeakers on the ship. 0.93

00:56:07.000 And then he was forced to resign. 0.97

00:56:10.000 So, just again, that is not a good look.

00:56:13.000 Also not a good look.

00:56:14.000 The president has now removed the independent watchdog for coronavirus funds.

00:56:18.000 Now, I am a member of the crowd that believes in the unitary executive branch.

00:56:22.000 I don't believe that there should be, quote-unquote, independent inspectors inside the executive branch.

00:56:25.000 This is what the legislature is for.

00:56:27.000 If the legislature wants to set up its own legislative council to oversee spending, then it can absolutely do that in legislation.

00:56:34.000 I can absolutely haul in the Trump administration with all of their reports and go through it.

00:56:38.000 That's why you have an oversight committee, for example, to oversee things, right?

00:56:41.000 That's what the oversight committee is for.

00:56:43.000 Instead, there are these random sort of inspectors general all over the executive branch, and this creates an unaccountable third, well, fourth branch of government that is not accountable to the president, really, because if he fires them, there's all sorts of hubbub, and also not really accountable to the legislature, because the legislature is not in a position to fire them either.

00:57:01.000 Well, with all of that said, It's not a great look.

00:57:04.000 When President Trump fired Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon watchdog, he had been charged to lead a group to oversee the implementation of the coronavirus law.

00:57:12.000 On Monday, Trump removed Fine from his post.

00:57:14.000 Instead, he named the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.

00:57:20.000 That decision effectively removed Fine from his role overseeing the coronavirus relief effort, since the new law permits only current inspectors general to fill the position.

00:57:28.000 Apparently fine, we'll go back to his Senate confirmed post as Principal Deputy Inspector General of the Pentagon.

00:57:34.000 There have been questions raised by Senator Lamar Alexander, for example, saying, like, I'm not sure why he did this, but that's not a great look.

00:57:39.000 Also, this comes directly on the heels of Trump going after an HHS watchdog after they reported on hospital shortages.

00:57:46.000 President Trump, the other day, like, directly went after this IG report.

00:57:50.000 He tweeted out, why didn't the IG, who spent eight years with the Obama administration, did she report on the failed H1N1 swine flu debacle where 17,000 people died?

00:57:57.000 Wants to talk to admirals, generals, VP, and others in charge before doing her report. 0.99

00:58:00.000 Another fake dossier.

00:58:02.000 The feeling of people are out to get me.

00:58:06.000 Again, nobody cares about that stuff right now.

00:58:08.000 Nobody cares about that stuff right now.

00:58:09.000 What we care about is that the resources get where they're going.

00:58:11.000 They have, by and large, been getting where they are going.

00:58:14.000 And we want to make sure that we're not wasting all of our money.

00:58:16.000 And we need a better reason than I don't like the guy for firing an inspector general inside the government, especially at this time.

00:58:22.000 Alrighty, so, those are things that I like as well as hate.

00:58:27.000 We have run out of time, unfortunately.

00:58:30.000 We'll be back here, let's see, when?

00:58:32.000 Two hours later today.

00:58:33.000 And then we'll be back here on Monday because it's Passover tonight.

00:58:36.000 So that means everybody who is Jewish, enjoy your Seder, be at home with your family.

00:58:41.000 If you want to see the plagues, just walk outside and take a look around.

00:58:45.000 And then we'll be back here the following Monday.

00:58:47.000 We do have a Sunday special episode that is going to be coming out featuring for Easter Franklin Graham, so go check that out for sure.

00:58:54.000 Otherwise, hang in there.

00:58:56.000 We'll bring you all the data, all the updates.

00:58:58.000 Come Monday, we'll all still be here.

00:58:59.000 We can all pray that we will be.

00:59:01.000 And in the meantime, hunker down with your family and enjoy a couple hours of this later today, or just hang out with our other shows.

00:59:07.000 Don't worry, we'll be hanging, all my friends will be hanging out with you the rest of the week.

00:59:10.000 All my friends and knolls.

00:59:11.000 They'll be hanging out with you the rest of the week over at Daily Wire.

00:59:12.000 Go check it out.

00:59:13.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:59:14.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:59:19.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:59:21.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:59:23.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:59:24.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:59:27.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:59:29.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

00:59:31.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

00:59:33.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

00:59:35.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:59:36.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:59:38.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:59:40.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:59:42.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:59:45.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:59:48.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:59:54.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 08, 2020

The Questions That Need Answers | Ep. 989

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